Geoffrey Lane, Baron Lane

Geoffrey Dawson Lane, Baron Lane, (17 July 1918 – 22 August 2005) was a British Judge who served as Lord Chief Justice of England from 1980 to 1992. The later part of his term was marred by a succession of disputed convictions. Lane's critics claimed that his refusal to believe that police evidence could be institutionally corrupt, and his reluctance to overturn the verdict of a jury, "represented a dangerous hindrance to justice". His failure to allow the appeal of the Birmingham Six in 1988 led to calls for his resignation following their successful appeal in 1991; an editorial in The Times "urged him to go", while 140 members of parliament signed a House of Commons motion to that effect. The son of a bank manager, Lane was born in Derby. He attended Shrewsbury School and Trinity College, Cambridge where he took Firsts in Part I of the Classical Tripos before the Second World War and both parts of the Law Tripos after he was demobilized. During the war, he served as a pilot in the Royal Air Force. Initially, he flew Wellington Bombers for 104 Squadron, before being promoted to Squadron Leader to command 233 Squadron, which flew Dakota transport aircraft in D-Day and Operation Market Garden. He was awarded the Air Force Cross in 1943. Lane was called to the bar at Gray's Inn in 1946. He specialised in criminal prosecutions on the Midland and Oxford circuit, and took silk in 1962. He prosecuted some of the Great Train robbers and the murderer James Hanratty in the same year, and was appointed as Recorder of Bedford in 1963. While appearing for the defendant in the case of R v Morris, he made a much-cited statement as to what constituted 'common purpose' for the criminal law, which Lord Parker of Waddington CJ adopted: "where two persons embark on a joint enterprise, each is liable for the acts done in pursuance of that joint enterprise, that that includes liability for unusual consequences if they arise from the execution of the agreed joint enterprise but (and this is the crux of the matter) that, if one of the adventurers goes beyond what had been tacitly agreed as part of the common enterprise, his co-adventurer is not liable for the consequences of that unauthorised act.